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Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Belated

I've been neglectful of my blog and my friends. Mostly I blame my dial-up connection which disconnects every 5 minutes or so. But life has also taken over.

Without further ado, my pregnancy went overdue, despite all of my attempts with Evening Primrose Oil, Raspberry Leaf Tea,Chiropractic treatments and sitting on the exercise ball for HOURS.

After a biophysical profile on the morning of January 24th, I had sort of resigned myself to the fact that I would need to be induced in the hospital on Monday, January 26th. The tech had estimated baby's weight to be 8 lbs 15 oz and he scored well, so they sent me home. On Saturday afternoon, I took Campbell to his hockey practice and when I was going up and down the stairs to get to the dressing room, I found that I felt a lot of pressure in my pelvis every time the baby moved, but this wasn't new. I let the other parents know that I was feeling uncomfortable and that Damon would be coming in to help Campbell get his skates off and carry his bag to the van.

Hanna was sick and sleeping in our bed, and her tossing and crying woke meup at about 3 am. I got up to go pee and felt a mild contraction. I lay backdown in the bed and noticed that about 10 minutes later, I had another. Theywere getting more intense, so I eventually sat on my labour ball to see ifthey were going to amount to anything. They were sporadic at first, 10 min.then 7, then 13, then 15. Finally at 4 am, I had 3 in a row that were 5 min.apart. I called the midwife at 4:20 and she said she would come soon. I wasvery apologetic and said that I really hoped that I wasn't waking her up fora false alarm. I could still talk through them. During the time I waswaiting for her, my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and getting muchmore intense. I could already feel a lot of pressure.

She arrived at about 4:45. She checked me and said that I was 4-5 cm. Shecalled the second midwife to come because she didn't think it would be long.I got into the shower and I felt okay in there, but after a while I feltlike I needed to get out and find a different position. As the secondmidwife arrived, I lay on my bed and asked the midwife if she could justbreak my water to relieve the pressure. She said that she would like to wait15 more minutes in hopes that I would be on the other side of 5 cm (I didn'tdo the GBS test, so they didn't want my water broken for a long time). Thenext contraction I had, my water broke. She checked me and I was fullydilated. The pressure didn't really let up, but at least with eachcontraction I felt like I could squeeze a bit and feel the baby moving downand this made things more bearable. I stayed on my side, but then I got theurge to push and was in a panic because I couldn't find a comfortableposition. Finally I got on my knees and held my headboard and after a coupleof pushes the baby's head was out. He began crying before I even pushed hisshoulders out.

After 1 hour and 40 minutes of labour, Griffin Matthew Samuel was born at home on Sunday, January 25th. He weighed 8 lbs 14 oz.

Matt woke the kids up and they all came in to meet him while the second midwife was packing up. The kids are all smitten with him. Especially Patrick and Damon, they would hold him all day if they could.

It took us all day to decide on his name, but finally I didn't want to thinkabout it any more, so I just wrote down Griffin. lol I hope I don't haveregrets.

Having a home birth was great. I can't say that it was necessarily a wonderful labour because it was a bit too quick, but because of that it just made so much more sense to stay home. I can't imagine how I would have managed to get ready to go to the hospital (leaving sick children behind), gotten there and stood around waiting to be taken care of when I was feeling such intense pain. I even wonder if I might not have made it there in time anyway. And for me, nothing beats climbing into your own bed with your kids all around you after you've given birth. People have been bringing me food (that I conveniently stocked the fridge full of) and boxes of chocolates! That sure beats hospital food.

So far he is a very easy baby, a good sleeper, a great nurser and he liesawake for long periods watching us all look at him. We feel very blessed.